Aberdeen defender Ashton Taylor will have surgery tomorrow after scans showed he has damaged knee cartilage.
The defender suffered the injury in Saturday’s 3-3 draw with Dundee and the Dons are unsure how long he will spend on the sidelines.
Manager Derek McInnes hopes it will be weeks rather than months.
He said: “Ash is going in for an operation on Wednesday. We believe he has damaged cartilage.
“We won’t know how long Ash will be on the sidelines for until after he has had the operation. Until then I can’t put an exact timescale on things but I would anticipate that Ash will be out for a number of weeks.”
The loss of Taylor is a huge blow to manager Derek McInnes, who is also without captain Russell Anderson and the loss of a second central defender could force McInnes to bring in a replacement.
Taylor’s absence will hit hard at Pittodrie but McInnes believes the momentum remains with his side despite the Reds dropping two valuable points at home to Dundee.
The thrilling 3-3 draw against the Dark Blues, coupled with Celtic’s 2-0 win at Hamilton, saw Aberdeen’s lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership reduced from four points to two, while the Hoops have two games in hand.
But McInnes says Ryan Jack’s injury-time equaliser will ensure the positive vibes created from an eight-game winning run will remain around Pittodrie for a little longer ahead of Friday’s trip to St Johnstone.
He said: “The way the players got a standing ovation going off having been 3-1 down with five minutes to go showed that it was a brilliant point for us.
“Before the game started we would have felt it was one we could have won.
“If we had defended better we probably would have won, given the amount of time we were on the front foot.
“However, I don’t want to come across as if Dundee didn’t deserve a point as they more than merited it for the quality of their first two goals.
“I think that attitude of going right until the end has been part of our team’s make-up since I have been in. Certainly, last season and this season there have been times when we looked like we never knew when we were beaten.”
McInnes, however, hopes lessons have been learned from the 3-3 draw.
The Dons were guilty of spurning a couple of gilt-edged chances to put the game beyond Dundee when they were leading 1-0 and only allowed Paul Hartley’s side back into the match thanks to some poor defending.
The Aberdeen manager knows the mistakes must be eradicated if his Reds are to return to winning ways at McDiarmid Park on Friday.
He added: “We did defend poorly for the first two goals, although that is taking nothing away from Dundee as they were well executed goals from their point of view.
“At 1-0 we had chances to score a second and third and we were very comfortable. There have been times where that hasn’t come back to bite us but against Dundee we were punished for not taking our chances when we were on top.”